Lehigh Valley Area Local, APWU

PO BOX 22122

LEHIGH VALLEY, PA 18002

(610) 882-3278

fax (610)-865-3781

NEXT MEETING

Sunday, September 10, 2023 @ 12:00 p.m.
Teamsters Union Hall
3614 Lehigh Street, Whitehall, PA 18052

4th COLA of 2021-2024 Contract

     The Consumer Pricing Index (CPI-W) rose in July resulting in a Cost-of-Living increase for all APWU represented carrer employees. This COLA will increase wages, for career employees, by $0.48 per hour ($998 annually for FT employees) and will appear in paychecks on September 15, 2023.

        This COLA brings the total increase, to date, under the 2021-2024 contract to $2.39 per hour ($4,971 annually). The next COLA is scheduled for February 2024 and will depend on the January CPI-W.

           PSEs do not receive COLA increases. However, they have received supplmental wage increases in addition to the November general wage increases. PSEs will enjoy these past COLAs upon their conversion as the increases have been added to career base rates. Their hourly wages going forward will include these COLAs.

            It should be noted that the APWU is the only postal union that ensures FULL COLA for all career employees. The Letter Carriers and Mailhandler unions, in their last contract, agreed to "graduated" COLAs where the amount of COLA is based on years of service. Meaning a newer employee gets less than a senior employee. The APWU does not accept that rationale and APWU President Mark Dimondstein fought for, and won, full COLA for all career employees regardless of sevice time.

           New pay rates, includeing the August COLA can be viewed on the National website.



PS FORM 3077 - REQUEST TO FORWARD PAYCHECK

     Any employee who retires, or goes out on an extended absence, should consider fill out PS Form 3077, Request to Forward Paycheck. When an employee retires any grievances that have been filed for them remain active. If those grievances are resolved with the employee receiving a payment, the check is mailed to the office where the employee last worked because the USPS no longer has access to that employee's records and does not know if they have moved since retiring.

       Too often, these checks sit, unclaimed for extended periods of time. Eventually, management decides to reach out to people, however, the checks often have expiration dates on them and if not received in time the employee has to request a replacement check which starts the whole process all over again.

        Sure, employees can come to the post office to claim their checks but first they have to know a check is there and for those who have moved coming to the office may not be an option. Usually, employees call the Post Office, verify their mailing address and management send the check out. They will not mail the check without verifying the address.

        By submitting PS Form 3077, employee can do their part to avoid this problem. Even if you do not plan on moving after retiring / resigning, you should still submit this for before you go. Local management can keep it on file and use it for any checks that appear with your name on them. You can download PS Form 3077 on the Fo r ms page.

eOPF access blocked - Employees Can Request Hard Copies

     The USPS has blocked access to employee personell folders (eOPF) on liteblue due to concerns about security. The documents in an employees OPF contain sensitive information (i.e. social security numbers, former addresses, maiden names, date of birth, high school attended, etc...) Some of this information is the kind used for security questions to reset passwords for online accounts.

     The Postal Service has employed an Artifical Intelligence (AI) program to scour the eOPF documents of all employees. The AI program is redacting, and obscuring, sensitive information. However, the AI program cannot identify hand-written information. As a result, the USPS must review the eOPF for every employee and manually redact any information the AI program may have missed. The USPS indicates it may take six months, or more, to complete this process. Until that time, the eOPF feature will be unavailable.

     The USPS has indictaed that employee may request printed copies of their eOPF, at no charge, by contacting their district office: From the USPS "Employees may request a copy of their eOPFs in person or in writing to their district Human Resource Office.    If the request is made in writing, they will be requested to provide proof of identity.  No charges will be assessed of active employees for requested copies of hard copies of their eOPFs while the eOPF system remains unavailable due to security upgrades."  The Postal Service has provided the following contact information for eOPF requests.

District Contact email Phone Address

PA-1 Lori Price lori.a.price@usps.gov 412-359-7687 1001 California Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15290-9998

DE-PA2 Julie Campbell julie.campbell@usps.gov 215-863-5034 3190 S 70th St
Philadelphia, PA 19053-9994

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON LITEBLUE SCAMS!!

APWU members are warned of two scams that have been occuring involving liteblue. The first involves scammers that call employees and claim to be Postal Inpectors. The inform the employee that their liteblue access has been locked and, in order to unlock it, the employee needs to verify their identify by providing the employee ID number and liteblue password. If the scammers get the info, they log on to the employee's account and change thjeir direct deposit information to send their paycheck to another bank account.

The second scam affects people who use Google searches to log on to liteblue. When they do a Google search for liteblue, some of the results that come up lead to fake liteblue sites. The scammers hope you input your information so they can steal it.

More detailed information is on the APWU website. Read it HERE

Maintenance LMOU Updated

We have completed negotaitions and signed-off on the 2021 - 2024 Maintenance Craft Local Memoiradum of Understanding for the Lehigh Valley P&DC. We are in the process of having new LMOU books printed for every Maintenance Craft member at the plant. Until they are ready, we have posted a copy of the new LMOU H ERE. Feel free to look it over and ask any questions you may have.

We are also planning to set up a number of Zoom meetings, with maintenance craft employees, to go over the changes int he agreement. Keep an eye on the bulletin board for dates / times of meeting

PTF / PSE CANVASSING MOVES ONLINE

Effective February 01, 2022, the USPS will be moving all PTF/PSE Canvassing bids online as part of eReassign on litbelue. Both the APWU and USPS realized there were problems with the current canvassing processes because some offices failed (refused?) to share the printed canvassing notices with their employees. This resulted in many PTFs missing out on the opportunity to change offices, and PSEs were denied the opportunity to convert to a career position.

This new, digital, process will remove that obstacle and grant all employees equal opportunities to bid. Postmasters in all offices have been instructed to give a service talk and post notices about this new process. In anticipation of the fact that some will "forget" to do it, you can view the posting HERE.

PRE-PRINT COPY OF NEW CONTRACT

The APWU has released a pre-print copy of the tentative agreement. This is a draft version which is pending proofreading and final editing before being printed and sent out to all members for the ratification vote. You can get a head start on preparing for the vote if you want to review the document HERE

COVID-19 INFORMATION & RESOURCES PAGE ADDED

With COVID surging across the District and the country, we have created a separate page for COVID related resources, information, and forms. This information includes:

Information about filing and OWCP claim when you are out of work due to COVID
Step-by-step instructions for filing a claim using the web-based e-Comp site
Links to carious documents, tutorials, Memorandums of Understanding, and other COVID stuff

Check out the COVID-19 page now.

2022 LOCAL MEMBERSHIP MEETINGS

JANUARY 09, 2022	FEBRUARY 06, 2022
APRIL 10, 2022	MAY 15, 2022
SEPTEMBER 11, 2022	NOVEMBER 06, 2022

The Local will also be hosting Area Informational Meetings in:	March 2022 - (Date / Location TBD)
	June 2022 - (Date / Location TBD)
	October 25, 2022 - Stroudsburg